Revision as of 23:08, 24 February 2017

The last version of W:A from Team17 is 3.0. Following updates were developed outside Team17, by independent programmers. Until 3.7.0.0, they were considered "Beta", due to not having passed Team17's internal quality review.

All updates since 3.5 Beta 2 and up to and including 3.6.26.5 were written almost solely by Deadcode, after being recruited by Team17. In September 2006, CyberShadow joined forces with Deadcode; all updates since and including 3.6.28.0 were written by Deadcode and CyberShadow.

Technical information

Installer

WA_Update-3.0.5.0_Beta_2.exe is a Microsoft installer (with an embedded Microsoft Cabinet file, which can be extracted with cabextract under a Unix-like system or (presumably) EXTRACT.EXE on Windows). Inside this installer is actually another installer - an InstallShield installer. Inside this is the data1.hdr file, which points programs towards the two cab files. These are InstallShield Cabinets. These can be extracted with Unshield on UNIX or i6comp on Windows.

WA_Exe-3.0.5.0_Beta_2.zip and wa_update-3.0.5.0_beta_3.zip to WA_Update-3.6.21.3_Beta.zip are technically not installers. They are just a plain zip file containing the updated files. One does not need to install previous updates, as these are cumulative.

WA_Update-3.6.22.1_Beta.exe to WA_Update-3.6.26.5_Beta.exe (and presumably some other versions) is a UPX-compressed self-extracting 7-Zip archive. The contents can be manually extracted using 7-Zip. Depending on which version of 7-Zip is being used, the UPX compression may have to be manually removed first.

Versions since 3.6.28.0 come in an NSIS installer package, which automates most of the updating tasks - detects installation directory, downloads and installs prerequisites like the 3.0 Patch or the updated GFX archives (which were introduced in 3.6.22.1). The updated GFX archives can be downloaded separately here, and it is a self-extracting 7z archive. Both of these (the NSIS installer and the 7-Zip archive) can be extracted with 7-zip, both on Windows and on Unix-like OSes.